Caroline: 0:00

What if the way you think is the biggest factor holding you back or propelling you forward? John Knowlton has lived that truth across ministry, business, and family, and now he's on a mission to help leaders think better every day. This episode is for leaders who feel outwardly successful, but inwardly unfulfilled professionals in transition, wondering what's next, and anyone who wants practical tools to improve their thinking and leadership. This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we're here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out On what only we can give the Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who've navigated big career transitions themselves so you can see what it's really like to make bold changes and feel inspired to create your own version of authentic success, one that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours. John Knowlton started out as a pastor and chaplain before moving into wealth management where he co-founded and scaled a firm to more than a billion dollars in client assets. After selling his interest in 2020, he took a family first sabbatical and now serves as a C 12 chair guiding Christian CEOs to build businesses for a greater purpose. He's also the author of Thinking for Success coming out in 2026, which distills 52 story-driven mental models to help people think and lead better. In today's conversation, John shares his journey through ministry business and family life, and what he's learned about aligning work with purpose. We talk about turning points: growth, sabbatical, and why all outcomes are rooted in the way we think. In this episode, you'll hear how John went from seminary and chaplaincy into building a billion dollar wealth firm. What a two week time study taught him about growth and focus, why he sold his business and took a sabbatical with his family. How his work with C 12 and his book Thinking for Success help leaders upgrade their thinking. Welcome John to Your Next Success. I am thrilled to have you joining us today.

John Knowlton: 3:12

Caroline, it's an honor and a pleasure, and I hope to be a real blessing to the audience.

Caroline: 3:16

Oh, I know that you will. Well, as you know, I am trying to help normalize career transitions and learn more about people's stories, and especially those who have, you know, had some twists and turns and are brave enough to share that. So, I know we are going to get to the amazing work that you do today, which is helping business leaders. You have a phenomenal book getting ready to launch that I know is gonna be a real tremendous benefit. So we're gonna get to that. But let's start at the beginning. in your childhood, what kind of things did you love to do? Or were there any interests or thoughts that you had about what you might wanna do for your career later on?

John Knowlton: 3:57

Yeah, good question. In terms of taking me back a couple of years. I think I at one point thought I would be an architect, but it turns out I'm not good at drawing or thinking about space. And so that wasn't it. And, I'm five foot six, so basketball career was out of the cards. So, you know, you think things.

Caroline: 4:17

Better suited for a fan.

John Knowlton: 4:19

Yep, I'm an excellent fan. Yes, I can cheer like with the best of them.

Caroline: 4:23

What kind of, activities did you enjoy doing? Or what things were you doing that you lost all concept of time?

John Knowlton: 4:30

Yeah, I was a Boy Scout and, earned Eagle Scout badge as well as my, my brother did as well, and, we really liked. I really liked being outdoors. I don't know that he l did, but, so I'll let, I'll let you interview him next time, but I, I really liked being outdoors and, have continued to be an outdoor athlete all my life. Bicycling and hiking, running, gotten into mountaineering lately, so those are

Caroline: 4:53

Very cool.

John Knowlton: 4:55

long days, not very fast. So basketball is short, quick at bursts of speed. I'm the tortoise who will eventually get to the top of the mountain.

Caroline: 5:05

But that's interesting though that even with the fascination and desire and sticking with scouts, that also from a very young age was helping you develop your leadership and giving you opportunities to guide and lead others. Really neat.

John Knowlton: 5:21

Yeah, our scoutmaster had a philosophy that it wasn't his job to lead the troop, it was the boy's job. And, he wrote a letter that my parents recently found. He's passed away, but this is, gosh, from 1984 maybe. And, and he'd written this letter to the Eagle Scout Committee that was going to assess me for the rank. In any case he told the story of me as a young teenager coming to him to complain about the poor quality of the scout meetings and demanding to know when he was going to fix it. And his answer was never, it's not my job to fix your meeting, it's your job. And so in what, ninth grade or something like that. He was making the point that if. I saw something that needed to be changed. Well, the responsibility was with me.

Caroline: 6:17

Oh wow. And that's so interesting though also because we're gonna get to this, but part of the beauty of your book Thinking for Success is it can be there to help people have guides that can be used in staff meetings and help leaders have new ways to think of stuff. So even then there was this seed and this inkling and this desire, innate desire that you were having to want to make those better, so

John Knowlton: 6:48

Yeah, well at that time I could identify what was wrong, but, identifying problems is the lowest form of thinking.

Caroline: 6:56

That's right.

John Knowlton: 6:57

Yeah, so I had to learn to identify solutions as well. That's where the, that's where the success comes in.

Caroline: 7:03

Absolutely. Okay, so you obtained this Eagle Scout rank, which is a tremendous, amount of work. My brother got, to his Eagle Scout. My kids decided to, pursue other activities,

John Knowlton: 7:16

Sure.

Caroline: 7:16

other talents. When you went to high school, were there any particular types of classes or activities, that you particularly enjoyed then?

John Knowlton: 7:27

Both in high school and in college, I took a stochastic approach. And so that's a big word that means random. And so as a, I think a, yes, a senior, my fall semester I went from advanced physics to small engine repair and back then, there were two tracks and I was on the going to college track, and so the vocational ed classes were not available to me. My dad had to sign a special form, giving permission for me to take an engine repair class.

Caroline: 8:00

Interesting.

John Knowlton: 8:01

and then I booked out a high school a semester early and started college and was just taking any classes that sounded interesting. I took physics, I took. Ah, psychology. I took political science. I took earth science, and after five years my dad says, well, that's it. I'm not paying tuition anymore. And, see, we had this implicit agreement that I would take classes forever and he would pay for them forever, but he was not on board with my implicit plan. And so, so I went, to. To the counselors or whomever at the registrar's office and said, I've been here five years, surely I've got a degree, right? And, so they, they eventually let me escape.

Caroline: 8:48

And your degree was geology?

John Knowlton: 8:50

Let me see. I had a, a Bachelor of science with a major in earth science

Caroline: 8:56

Okay.

John Knowlton: 8:56

and a minor in, political science and religion.

Caroline: 9:02

Aha. Aha. And now that kind of goes to this, this next enterprise.'cause then you continued on with school, right? So what, what after you graduated college

John Knowlton: 9:13

Yeah. Then I went to,

Caroline: 9:15

me the, then what

John Knowlton: 9:16

then I went to seminary. Seminary is a professional training school for pastors where you earn a practical degree, not an academic degree called a master of divinity. So there are theological or academic degrees called Masters of Theological Studies or or something else that might lead to a PhD. Masters of Divinity are typically the last degree that working pastors earn. I didn't quite complete that course of study, but I did end up working as a pastor in various settings. I was a jail chaplain. I worked in an inner city church. I worked in very rural, very rural churches on the banks of the Ohio River and, no running water in the church building, outhouse. Yeah. So very diverse experiences and then still to this day, I'm, on staff at a, now a pretty good sized inner city church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I'm the white business guy pastor amongst mostly, African American full Gospel church.

Caroline: 10:16

Hmm. That's, it's gotta be a very beautiful experience though. Just very amazing

John Knowlton: 10:23

It's cool. We've made a lot of friends that we wouldn't have made otherwise, and, my wife and I have been there for 22 years, so we're Pretty committed. That's our place.

Caroline: 10:32

So as you, uh, moved on from the seminary studies, and then what'd you choose to do for work at that time? What was going on in life? What was going on in work?

John Knowlton: 10:40

Sure. So I was married to a, my first wife who was convinced that ministry was ruining our marriage.

Caroline: 10:47

Hmm

John Knowlton: 10:48

Okay, I am committed to you before I committed to the church. So stepped away from full-time ministry and Caroline, I was applying for every kind of job that should have been opened. This is in, in my twenties, and I could get interviews, but I couldn't get a job. I'm back to painting apartment buildings to buy groceries and, goodness sakes, nothing was opening up for me. And so my mom sent me a recruiting VHS videotape, you know, you'd clunk it into the machine and watch, gotta rewind it, be kind, and rewind.

Caroline: 11:21

Be kind, rewind.

John Knowlton: 11:22

That's it. Any case, it was a recruiting videotape from Edward Jones. And, I watched the video. I said, ah. I like investing and I'll apply and they rejected me. But the process of their application experience got me interested in pursuing the field. So I looked around and figured out who had a good training program in my area, and I went to a career fair with one resume because I knew which company I wanted to hire me, and I gave it to the recruiter and they hired me and they didn't tell me it was supposed to take a long time to pass all these tests. And I did it in the fastest time anybody had heard of, just because I didn't know that it was supposed to take a long time.

Caroline: 12:05

that it was a expectation to be otherwise. Yeah.

John Knowlton: 12:08

I have to read 600 pages and take a test on it. Great. Sign me up next week. And so I did that. Six months later, my first wife left me. So apparently my job wasn't the whole issue. I'm sure it was much more about my performance as a husband. And so I started a career in wealth management and As I stumbled backwards into it, it turned out to be something I was okay at.

Caroline: 12:32

Now, do you think that part of that first wife's, influence and saying ministry was ruining your marriage, was that partially why you didn't finish that degree?

John Knowlton: 12:42

No, it wasn't.

Caroline: 12:44

Okay. All right. Not related, and so then. At the time that seems like, Aw man, I had this marriage I committed to forever and now what? But then did you pour your life into that wealth management financial career?

John Knowlton: 13:00

I was pretty dedicated. Needing money, you know, to live and all that. So that was, I didn't have a computer on my desk. We, this was at the end of the nineties before the internet was widely available. In fact, when I had my interview, I sent a thank you email to the vice president who hired me, and he told me later that was the first external email he'd ever received.

Caroline: 13:26

Oh wow. Interesting. Well, good for you for being up with technology.

John Knowlton: 13:29

Well, they had an in internal email system, but no one was using it outside of, you know, from company to company at the time.

Caroline: 13:40

Oh, very interesting.

John Knowlton: 13:40

And so it was literally names and phone numbers onto pieces of paper and pick up the phone and dial it. Wait, interrupt their dinner. Hey, I'm John from this company, can we talk about financial planning? You know, that kind of thing.

Caroline: 13:56

Did you have a certain number of calls you had to do each day?

John Knowlton: 13:58

Some firms were like 300 dials a day. You know, you may have heard these kind of stories. That is really, really brutal. I tried to hone my effectiveness so that I could reduce my volume.

Caroline: 14:10

Yes. Yeah, when I did, when I first did recruiting, for the chemical industry, it had grown from one of those, at that time it was a hundred call, a hundred dials a day type of thing. And, and people, sure enough, they would check off these little sheets of what kind of call they had and this and that, and I'm like, oh my gosh. I was like, I'm gonna do quality, not quantity. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna find how to do warm stuff. I'm gonna hit the metric of the results, but let me figure out how I'm gonna get there. I don't feel the need to, to dial a hundred nonsense calls if I could have two good ones. So,

John Knowlton: 14:43

Yep. That's what I tried to do. Yeah.

Caroline: 14:45

Yeah. Well, that's cool. That's okay. So then what happened? So how did you go from that to transitioning out of it?

John Knowlton: 14:54

Yeah. Well, so that was a 24 year career or something like that. My current wife and permanent wife, Julie, was a prospect. So she was looking for financial advice.

Caroline: 15:07

So it had not been for that. Career choice that you made, you would not have met this beautiful blessing

John Knowlton: 15:15

there you go.

Caroline: 15:16

of your wife.

John Knowlton: 15:17

That's right. Yep.

Caroline: 15:18

Yeah. And, and you guys went on to have a, a few children then decided to add a couple

John Knowlton: 15:24

Yeah.

Caroline: 15:25

Yeah.

John Knowlton: 15:26

Yeah. So, so, I have a stepdaughter Julie brought to our marriage. We have a son together and then we, fostered siblings and then ended up adopting this them, so four kids in total. And Caroline, if you can think of another way to get kids, I don't want to know what it is because we are at the cusp of the nest being empty. So my last youngest is a senior in high school.

Caroline: 15:50

Oh, that's exciting. Well, I wish that you can still make great influences on children's lives, but maybe not your children.

John Knowlton: 15:57

Yeah, that's right. Well, Caroline, I'll, I'll continue this story. So I, I was an individual contributor in a big company and after, well, about a year and a half, this is typical in sales organizations. I sort of met the metrics and therefore was promoted to manager.

Caroline: 16:17

As an individual contributor, so therefore we're gonna move you out of that individual contributor and let's see how good your people skills are yet with your training before and your desire and working with them through people and helping. Yeah. So how'd that go?

John Knowlton: 16:31

Yeah, so that was, that was okay. I think I was a fair manager in my twenties. I wouldn't say a great one. And, in case we decided, Julie and I had met and we had decided I was gonna go step outta that management role and back into building my own practice, if you will, of having my own clients. And she still had a corporate job, so it was okay. She had nice benefits and I was gonna go from a salary back to eat what you kill. And, six months after we got married was 9/11.

Caroline: 17:03

Huh.

John Knowlton: 17:03

And she tells me, you know what? I think God wants me to step outta my corporate job and go work part-time as the church office administrator. And I'm like, huh. So we're going from.

Caroline: 17:16

Great timing. Okay, but God, but, God wants her to do it. So then you kind of like sometimes when those God wants you to do something, I don't know about you, but I kind of learned to be like, okay. All right. That's what I'm doing. I guess if you're give, putting it on my heart, you're gonna gimme a way to make it happen. But what were your thoughts?

John Knowlton: 17:36

Here was my response. Okay, let me pray about that. And on a Monday, I felt that God was telling me to say yes to Julie. And so I said. I love you and I trust you God, but I wanna make sure I'm hearing you right. So I'm gonna ask again tomorrow. So on Tuesday I got the same answer and so I at breakfast to, I said to Julie, I have no idea how this is gonna work, but. Put in your notice. 20 minutes later, Caroline, I got to work and there was a voicemail from a woman who was near the end of her career looking for a succession plan. She brought me into her practice, paid me a salary, introduced me to all her clients, and sold me her business.

Caroline: 18:24

Wow. Wow.

John Knowlton: 18:27

I learned.

Caroline: 18:27

That was already lined up like that. Yeah.

John Knowlton: 18:30

I, I, and I learned through that process a trust. My wife, when she tells me she heard from God. Second is I learned you can get clients one at a time by dialing the phone. Whole lot and wearing your finger out, or you could buy'em in chunks. And I liked buying'em in chunks. And so from 2005 to say 2015, I continued to learn about doing acquisitions, mergers and acquisitions, learning about how to approach elderly. I say elderly, I'm getting close to the age, but you know, advisors with gray hair, I would find them.

Caroline: 19:08

Whose gonna approach you?

John Knowlton: 19:10

yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at that. Any case, the, finding, refining my process. How do I approach'em, how do I, how do I learn to communicate that I'm gonna deliver good quality care and service to their clients? All, all the things. And we did a few little deals and I, I built a practice. So by 2014 or so, I had one good partner and, a handful of staff. And we were managing about$125 million of client assets. And we set a goal that year in 2014 to be, at a billion dollars, so to 8X our company.

Caroline: 19:48

Hmm.

John Knowlton: 19:48

And we kinda looked at each other and neither my partner or I knew how to manage a business eight times larger and said, well, maybe we should get some skill up a little bit here. And so I drew the short straw and I was gonna go get a, a Master's in Business administration and right before I picked the program, I, you know, signed up and everything, but right before it started, three different people who don't know each other in three different states told me not to do it.

Caroline: 20:15

Oh.

John Knowlton: 20:16

And one of them said, John, you can read all those books yourself. What you need is a group of other business people to walk life together with you. So, okay. All right. That's interesting. We set the goal, I found what's called a pure advisory group, an hour away. I would drive once a month and, any case, I'm, I'm kind of working this process and we had identified mergers and acquisition as our biggest opportunity to hit this billion dollar goal. And after a year, we'd basically not made any progress.

Caroline: 20:52

Hmm.

John Knowlton: 20:53

And so I did something brutal. I did a two week time study on myself. So in 15 minute increments, I assessed, what do I do? At work all day long. So at the end of two weeks, I had over 400 data points before Ai. And so I had to go you know, kind of put these things into buckets. And I, I realized there were kind of four big buckets of how I was spending my time. One was client service. One was running the business. One was, let's say it was investment management and the one getting the least amount of time, of course, was our biggest opportunity: mergers and acquisitions. And so we used that data to make two key changes. And the first was to hire another financial advisor to service some of my client responsibilities to give me more time,

Caroline: 21:45

Yeah.

John Knowlton: 21:45

Free up time. And then we hired somebody whose only job was to work on mergers and acquisitions. We didn't even teach her how to help clients. Because we

Caroline: 21:54

wow.

John Knowlton: 21:54

her getting sucked into operational stuff. She had to work exclusively on new business through acquisition. So We got this person now I need to keep her busy. And so it turbocharged my effort. So we built an email list. I had over 4,000 advisors that I was continuously drip marketing to and writing campaigns and making outbound phone calls and all this kind of stuff. And in 2018 we made a key merger. So we had developed capabilities on the M&A side, and this other firm it's a little bigger than us, but similar sized, had excellent investment management and client service processes built out but didn't, hadn't done M&A. And so when we merged, it was a cashless transaction. We just put the two firms together, but now we've got this great platform of investment management excellence, and client service excellence that I could start to drop all kinds of deals into. And so from 2014 when we were at$125 million to 2020, when I exited, we were at a billion and a quarter. And just in case the money, the math is fuzzy. That's a 10X in five years.

Caroline: 23:15

Imagine what your life would be like if your career aligned with who you are, what you do best, and actually fueled the life you want. At Next Success, we support all ages and stages through career transitions from students exploring majors or careers to job seekers actively searching or re-imagining their next move to professionals committed to self-awareness and leadership growth. Stay connected and explore what's possible at nextsuccesscareers.com and follow@nextsuccessmethod on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Did you plan your 2020 exit before knowing about COVID?

John Knowlton: 24:01

Well, I lived through COVID. I was working through COVID, so it was at the end of that year. Yeah.

Caroline: 24:06

Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.'cause I've talked to some people and it's like. That's when they were gonna leave their big corporate job and start their business. And like I talked, one, beautiful lady whose podcast was getting ready to be released, she had set a date of March 13th, 2020 was the day she was gonna leave her job right now. March 13th was the day it all went down with like the two weeks to slow to spread,

John Knowlton: 24:29

Right.

Caroline: 24:29

So. Her husband. Luckily that day was like, are you sure you wanna pick today? Our governor just said

John Knowlton: 24:35

Yes.

Caroline: 24:36

She, she delayed it for a while, but

John Knowlton: 24:38

Yeah.

Caroline: 24:38

It's just kind of interesting how it all works. Okay. So you leave that business

John Knowlton: 24:45

if you don't mind, I'll just say besides hitting the, the business goal of being over a billion dollars. We had two adopted kids, you remember. Adopted kids often come with a trauma background because if you're eligible to be adopted, that means stuff went wrong. Your parents couldn't care for you, or there was abuse or neglect or all of the above, whatever. And so, one of our adopted kids had such a trauma history that she needed to live in a residential treatment for four years. And, so we live in Michigan. She was in treatment in Texas. And so once a month. Julie or I would fly to Houston, rent a car, drive to the other town an hour or so away, spend a few hours with a kid and repeat the process. It would be, 36 hours of travel for, a four hour visit. Something like that. Yeah. But, that chow was ready to come home and reenter family life and, and Julie raised her hand and said, Hey, you know, I'm gonna need some help here. I cannot bear this alone. And so, so we had that combination of need in the family and we'd hit the business goal and so that, that converged at the end of 2020.

Caroline: 26:01

to make that happen.

John Knowlton: 26:03

Yeah.

Caroline: 26:03

Then you were able to be at home and help with that transition for that beautiful child and, and then what?

John Knowlton: 26:11

Huh. Well, Julie said you're not working. In 2021, you're taking a year long sabbatical.

Caroline: 26:18

Oh.

John Knowlton: 26:18

And so I did, I built an addition on the house and we bought a, motor home and did an epic RV trip across the country. And,

Caroline: 26:27

So how many kids went on that trip?

John Knowlton: 26:30

Well, two were with us for the whole month. The younger two, one was living on the West coast, and so we met her when we got there, and one was a young adult and flew out to spend one week with us and then we had a, a fiance as well. So there was a total of what four..., seven people, but not all. You know, we had various, arrangements and,

Caroline: 26:55

How did that work with, because, motor homes are larger than regular vehicles, but I don't know about you. Getting family together to be in a very tiny space for an extended period of time, is a blessing and an opportunity to learn a little more patience. But how, how was that, how, how that work? I've, I've often thought it'd be great to do one of those kinds of trips, but then a two hour road trip anywhere has me rethink that plan.

John Knowlton: 27:29

Yeah, I, so it has not been repeated. Let, maybe that's enough. My wife and I love it. And so we camp together,

Caroline: 27:38

Yeah.

John Knowlton: 27:39

just the two of us.

Caroline: 27:42

Well that's, that's interesting. What are some of the greatest memories or experiences from that time that you got to have together?

John Knowlton: 27:52

We discovered the Pacific Northwest and, the Cascade Range, Mount Rainier, Mount Hood. And, so since then I've climbed a, a Pacific Northwest Mountain every year since then.

Caroline: 28:04

Wow. Wow. That's so cool. All right, so you come back from this epic road trip and take us up on that part of the story.

John Knowlton: 28:16

and I stumbled again, right? I keep stumbling on things. If you know the story of Genesis, Jacob was wandering around one place and he, he happened upon a place where he fell asleep and had this incredible dream of angels ascending and descending this ladder, and he wakes up and he said. Wow. This is none other than the gate of heaven. So he just stumbled upon this gate of heaven, right? So I stumbled upon something called C 12. C 12 is peer advisory, like I had been part of as a business leader, but it's specifically for Christian CEOs and business owners. And so I now lead a couple of groups of people running businesses. And, we have a, a monthly day long business retreat, and then I coach them in between as well. And so it's this perfect Venn diagram of business and ministry for me. And along the way I've, I've really become clear on my purpose, which has, is to help people think better every day.

Caroline: 29:19

Hmm, and, and so you stumbled upon C 12 and it's an organization that hired you, or you volunteered, or how does that work?

John Knowlton: 29:26

It's technically a franchise, and so, I'm a 10 99.

Caroline: 29:32

Got you.

John Knowlton: 29:33

Yeah, it's a for-profit entity. The members pay real, real, dues to be a part of it.

Caroline: 29:39

That's so cool. But, but yet it was using a lot of your foundational building blocks that you had acquired through all this, and an outlet in a different way. And yes, combining that ministry and vocation together. That's, that's so cool. And so how did this, becoming an author come about?

John Knowlton: 29:57

Ah, yeah. Well, I didn't set out to write this book Thinking for Success, rather just as I was leading people, I realized that people keep making the same mistakes, whether it's at their work or how they're interacting with clients or complaining about their spouses, whatever, right? People keep hitting their head against the same wall, and I would try telling them what to do, which didn't empower them. I would try giving a principle, but principles tend to be abstract and hard to apply. And then I stumbled upon the idea of telling stories. So I would tell a story in a staff meeting, would talk about it a little bit and give it a nice title or descriptive handle. And then whenever that lesson needed to be refreshed, we could just refer to remember Indiana Jones, or remember Jonathan Munkhouse on HMS Endeavor, whatever the case might be. And I said, you know, I'm gonna start forgetting the stories so I would write them down. And then over some period of years I realized I had 40 stories written down, and then lightning fast brain. Hey, if you have 52 of these, you'd have one a week for a year's worth of staff meetings. So I kept writing them until I had 70 stories or so, hired an editing team to get it down to the best 52.

Caroline: 31:18

Hmm. And so that's Thinking for Success, and when will that be a available? Actually, I think you have a way to get people a head start on knowing what that's all about now.

John Knowlton: 31:27

Yeah. So, I'm happy to provide a free chapter, so if you just go to thinkingforsuccess.com, the first thing you'll see is a popup saying, Hey, you want a free chapter from John's book? Sure, go ahead and get that. And then it'll also include a link to a 90-second video where I explain how to use it in a staff meeting. So this is really designed for for leaders who want to empower their staff to think better, or for individual contributors to upgrade their own thinking.

Caroline: 31:55

And when will the rest of the book be out for the masses to be able to buy?

John Knowlton: 31:59

Yeah, so, officially it's January 6th, 2026, but I understand that pre-orders do matter. And so, there's a link in that same spot to, to find it at anywhere you like to buy books.

Caroline: 32:12

What's your advice for people who are not sure if what they're doing is what they want to continue doing and they're starting to have those questions and what if somebody comes to you with that kind of a desire or struggle? What? What do you say?

John Knowlton: 32:31

Yeah. Well, I don't wanna contradict your advice, Caroline, so I know you have your own own approach, but I'll share mine and

Caroline: 32:40

Yeah, because there's different people will only hear certain messages from different voices.

John Knowlton: 32:46

There you go.

Caroline: 32:46

There's plenty of people that need help. So even if your perspective is a little different than mine, that's okay.'cause that's what somebody needs.

John Knowlton: 32:54

Yeah. Well, at commencement addresses, it's almost a cliche to say, follow your passion and

Caroline: 33:00

Yeah.

John Knowlton: 33:00

Not all passions are at the sweet spot of you like it, it's good for other people and it makes money that those are the three things that kind of need to come together for a career to work. You've gotta have skills around it. It's gotta be a blessing to others. Otherwise you're doing theft and then it's gotta generate, there's gotta be a financial engine to it, right? And so I would say find those things. Now you can get some clues to that. Things that people tell you you're good at is one. Things that you can, you, you asked earlier, Caroline, about what caused you to lose track of time. That that's when we get into that flow state, right?

Caroline: 33:39

Yep.

John Knowlton: 33:39

And that's a clue to some of the things that, that you can be successful at. But then you've gotta have a financial engine too, because we are doing this to, for our livelihood. And so you could. You could coach, kindergartners, they're probably not gonna pay you much. Maybe that should be your volunteer thing. And then you coach, you know, business people who can pay you.

Caroline: 34:05

Absolutely. Yeah. I need to get some business clients to help with their, maybe employee retention and, and, leadership development because businesses will have the resources to continue to invest in their people. People that my heart might be called to help those who have been laid off or something of that sort. Phenomenal people. But the reality is if they just lost a job, they don't really have a lot of money to invest in.

John Knowlton: 34:31

That's right.

Caroline: 34:31

it depends on what they do ahead of time, but

John Knowlton: 34:33

Yeah.

Caroline: 34:33

there's just different, different facets of different things. But yeah, Some are hobbies and some are jobs, careers.

John Knowlton: 34:40

But, but I would say whatever it is that you're, you wanna do, the value creation cycle begins with giving. Jesus of Nazareth said, give and it shall be given to you. And so, Yes we,

Caroline: 34:54

Yes.

John Knowlton: 34:55

If we enter the world seeking to gain people, sniff that out in no time flat. But if we come as someone who has something to give, then that will begin this cycle that results in success and, and increase in abundance.

Caroline: 35:14

Absolutely. I'm big on authentic success, and to me, authentic success is whatever you define it to be. Right? What, what you want it, not necessarily how somebody else would define it, but how do you define authentic success for you in this moment?

John Knowlton: 35:28

Sure. Well, generally I'll say success is, is an asymptote. You might remember that concept from geometry, right? It's a curve that approaches but never touches a line. It gets ever closer. So you could say, go halfway to that wall. Go halfway again. Go halfway. Again, you'll never get there, but you get closer and closer. And so if you think about the curve as your life and the the line that you're approaching is the purpose for which you were made, and success is getting that curve closer and closer to the purpose for which you were made. So for me, my purpose is to help people think better every day. And I believe that all of our outcomes are a result of our behaviors, which are all rooted in our thinking. So if we can start with getting our thinking right, get selfishness out, get self-centeredness out, get me- me- me out, and start to focus on how do I serve you? How do I, become, someone who enables you or it, it causes good things to come into your life? While that's gonna lead to the right kind of behaviors that cause me to serve you well. And then the outcomes are gonna be great for both of us.

Caroline: 36:38

Oh, I love it. So remind me, how do people find you? How can they find Thinking for Success? How could they work with you? Or maybe even be part of C 12?

John Knowlton: 36:47

Yeah.

Caroline: 36:48

where do people go if they're inspired and want to get more of this?

John Knowlton: 36:51

I tried to make it easy. So the book is called Thinking for Success, and the website is thinkingforsuccess.com so that's a spot where I post insights and, you can get the access to, sections of the book and, contact us there.

Caroline: 37:04

Well, thank you so very much, John. This has been an amazing, engaging, inspiring conversation, and I wish you continued success with the Thinking for Success book.

John Knowlton: 37:16

Thanks so much, Caroline. I hope it was a blessing to your listeners.

Caroline: 37:19

John's journey shows us that success is not just about titles or numbers, it's about aligning your work, family, and purpose. His stories and practical tools remind us that when we think better, we live better and we lead better. Be sure to connect with John and grab a free

37:40

chapter of his book at thinkingforsuccess.com.

Caroline: 37:45

John, thank you for sharing your story and wisdom with us today. And to all of you listening, when you take these insights and start to think better every day, you are already on the path to your next success. Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.